We know your trusted duct tape is solution to your every problem, but this might be making it go a bit too far! But Fiberfix still went ahead and tried a crazy experiment involving duct tape that will certainly make you jump off your seat!

Fiberfix is a USA based company which has managed to create a tape that they claim is “stronger than steel!”. This lofty claim was then tested using a a cage holding a car fixed with first a normal duct tape, and second time round Fiberfix’s “magic” tape. To be fair, in both the experiments the weight of the car was roughly the same, and twice the amount of duct tape was used on each joint as compared to fiberfix.

Before the experiment Fiberfix’s contacted a mechanical engineer to determine if the plan was remotely feasible. However, he too failed to model the experiment due to the sheer number of variables and assumptions. The cage wasn’t made entirely of Fiberfix as the tape’s flexible qualities prevented the PVC pipe from being able to bear large loads. So instead the team decided to use a metal roll cage covered with tape and with each connection joint held by it. With no idea on how the results would pan out, the team held this outrageous experiment with the years of their work and research on the line!

And as much as you can praise duct tape for its ability to fix anything, it sadly wasn’t able to hold the cage together as it failed miserably broke off into many pieces leaving the car in a complete wreck. However, in the second experiment the Fiberfix cage didn’t break at all, and the car escaped almost completely unscathed. So now the question comes,

What Makes The Tape So Strong?

Fiberfix is about to revolutionize the word “repair” as this tape offers a permanent solution to your repairing woes. The company claims on its website that the tape can fix up your broken shovel and make it stronger than it ever was before. The tape uses a special resin that has been kept a secret, along with a unique weave pattern making it incredibly impact-resistant, watertight, and as strong as steel – literally. In an attempt to check this claim, a study used a three-point flexural load test on two galvanized steel pipes secured with tape. These pipes were then placed underneath a hydraulic press and put under recorded load. The results saw Fiberfix sustain 200 times as much force as an ordinary duct tape, with Fiberfix breaking at a whopping 2,000 lbs where the duct tape gave in on only 100 lbs.

The tape’s inspiration came from the idea that if a medical cast can hold a bone with such strength, it should be able to fix and hold other things as well. The team went on to test the medical cast in several cases, but soon found out that although it can heavy loads, it was not impact resistant nor it was water tight.

So the team at FiberFix went on to conduct several experiments and studies in order to make a tape which was load bearing, impact resistant, and water tight! Dozens of variations of resins, knit and weave patterns, strand materials, etc were tried. And high-pressure compressors for water tightness test, sledgehammers for impact resistance test and high-powered hydraulic presses to test loads were employed to formulate a material. And after years of hard work and dedication, they finally came up with this amazing product.